Windows 7: External 1TB spins up but computers do not detect

As you can see in the title the external recieves power but computers do not detect it whatsoever. This is a friends HD that has personal pictures and videos from deployment and its important to me that we recover them for him. Anyone have any ideas on how to go about doing that?

Thanks for the help!

A few things to try.... plug into another USB port (on the assumption it is USB), if the drive came with a power supply, plug that in to give it extra juice. If neither of these allow the drive to be detected, right click on my computer and go to manage, disk management, and see if it is listed there.

Hope this is of help.

You could also try another USB cable, as these can be damaged if you inadvertently run the hoover over them, for example. Another possibility is that the interface circuitry in the enclosure has developed a fault, whereby the drive either shows intermittently (I have had experience of this) or, as in your case, fails to show at all. In both scenarios, the only solution is a replacement enclosure.

More.
There is probability that

• Your USB port not sufficiently powered up
• Loose USB port connection

If you are with desktop, try to plug it to back panel USB port, but seems that you are using Toshiba laptop, Obtaining Y type USB cable also can be an option.

Kevin

Thanks for the replies. We already went out and bought a new enclosure before i posted on the forums but the same issue is happening. We also tried plugging it into other computers with the same result.

If you have tried different USB cables and a new enclosure and are still not being able to recognise the drive on multiple computers, then it looks like the logic circuit (the PCB on the drive itself) has failed. It is possible to replace them, however you need a board from the same make and revision of drive. This is something that is best entrusted to drive recovery specialists (as they should be able to obtain the necessary board), however it is not cheap so should be regarded as your last option.

Before you go down that route (and you should discuss this with your friend), there is one other thing that you could try, and that is to see if the drive can be recognised by connecting it internally. However, this depends on whether you have any spare internal SATA sockets on your motherboard, plus a suitable PSU connector.

Did this drive come from a Windows system or from a Mac or Linux.

Good point, Wolfgang. I hadn't thought of that. Both MACs and Linux computers can utilise external HDDs, however if the drive is formatted by either of these systems then it can't be accessed from Windows.

However, if you are able to connect it internally as I suggested, this will at least be able to tell us if the drive is working or not, as it will be detected by the BIOS (even though it is not accessible through Windows).

With it connected, do you see anything for it in Disk Management?

In all likelihood, this is the exact explanation for the problem.

Ironically there was an essentially identical other thread discussed just yesterday, with exactly this explanation. The hard drive had been given by a friend (and contained graduation photos and videos) who was a Mac user.

The screenshot of DISKMGMT in that other thread showed no file system at all on the partition of that external hard drive. Not RAW, not FAT32 or NTFS, not OFFLINE. ONLINE but no recognizable file system.

More revealing as the "giant clue", there was an EFI Partition on the drive shown in that DISKMGMT screenshot.

I agree... sounds very much like a Mac-formatted external drive.